Take Brazil, for example. Their ethanol program is fundamentally different. It's based on sugarcane, not corn, and it has a spectacular EROI (Energy Return on Investment) of about 8:1. That means for every unit of energy put into producing it, eight units are returned. By contrast, U.S. corn ethanol barely breaks even, with an EROI around 1.3:1 to 1.8:1.
Brazilian ethanol also sidesteps many of the land use and food diversion issues that plague U.S. biofuels. Sugarcane is mostly grown on degraded pastureland far from the Amazon, and it doesn’t displace staple food crops. Plus, the leftover biomass (bagasse) is burned to power the refineries themselves, making the process close to energy self-sufficient.
The Brazilian model shows that biofuels can work—but only under the right agricultural, environmental, and economic conditions. The U.S. corn ethanol lobby essentially hijacked the "green energy" narrative to push something that mostly benefits Big Ag subsidies and corn states, with questionable climate gains.
So yeah, skepticism about biofuels is warranted—but we should be careful not to throw out the good examples with the bad.
I vaguely recall campaigns against turning Amazon into pastureland via slash and burn.
If workers have to face the current reality, we are in for an unfortunate time.
The better outcome would be fixing the current reality before workers see what is being done.